They Rose At Our
Entrance And Bowed; And How I Wish I Could Have Asked Them, Every One,
About Their Lives!
There was nothing more except the doubt of that dear little Mother when
I gave her a silver dollar for her kindness.
She seemed surprised and
worried, and asked, "Is it for the charity or for me?" What could I
do but answer, "Oh, for your Grace," and add another for the charity.
She still looked perplexed, but there was no way out of our
misunderstanding, if it was one, and we left her with her sweet,
troubled face between the white wings of her cap, like angel's wings
mounting to it from her shoulders. Then we went to look at the statue of
the founder bearing a hapless stranger in his arms in a space of flowers
before the hospital, where a gardener kept watch that no visitor should
escape without a bunch worth at least a peseta. He had no belief that
the peseta could possibly be for the charity, and the poverty of the
poor neighborhood was so much relieved by the mere presence of the
hospital that it begged of us very little as we passed through.
IX
We had expected to go to Granada after a week in Seville, but man is
always proposing beyond his disposing in strange lands as well as at
home, and we were fully a fortnight in the far lovelier capital. In the
mean time we had changed from our rooms in the rear of the hotel to
others in the front, where we entered intimately into the life of the
Plaza San Fernando as far as we might share it from our windows.
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